


Half-Baked

by herbailiwick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Birthday, Cake, M/M, Soulless Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 16:11:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4673021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbailiwick/pseuds/herbailiwick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>haloshornsglitter prompted: “Souless!Sam ‘Maybe we should just burn the whole thing down and start over.’”</p><p>Soulless!Sam has a strange request. Or is it a normal request, and Sam himself is just strange?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-Baked

“It’s weird? Really?” Sam scooches a little closer on the couch, gaze steady. “Weird how, Bobby?”  


Sam is softer somehow, wearing t-shirts readily, walking around barefoot. But his demeanor is so cool, and he’s forgotten a lot of things, a lot of the ways they used to “fit”.

The clouds are covering up the sun, making the open blinds feel oddly like prison bars. Bobby turns to Sam, who's wearing a soft v-neck he’s close enough to feel. “Well, we’ve never celebrated it _before_.” He looks at Sam with mild concern, not for the first time in the 11 months since Sam has been back. Sam hasn’t acted normal the whole time, so why would he start today of all days? That’d be hoping for too much, clearly.

Sam’s brow furrows lightly, not enough to show as much interest as the old Sam would have shown. 

“Hell, usually something _horrible_  is going down around your birthday,” Bobby points out. And...there it is. He’s finally gotten a reaction out of Sam, a little bit of offense. It feels good. Of course, that it feels good feels bad, but not _too_  bad. “What? It’s true.” It’s not that he wants today to be bad, in fact, he’d like it to be nice, for once, but he’s annoyed, just _annoyed_  that Sam is so off.

Sam’s hand curls around Bobby without asking if that’s okay. It is, it almost always is, but he usually asks anyway, hyper aware of the fact boundaries exist. Well, he asked before the swan dive, anyway. He’s gonna say something, Sam. He’s not taking, “Let’s not celebrate your birthday after all,” for an answer, if he can help it.

“You did more for my birthdays than Dad or Dean ever did, though.”   


Oh, yeah right. Ice-cream at the park? Trip to the farmers’ market? Even Bobby’s dad had done more than that, with presents, and even an actual party more than once.

Wait. “You have a point.” He remembers Sam’s complaints about the Winchesters’ lackluster holidays, birthdays included, remembers how excited young Sam had been. He remembers wide eyes and giggling. What was that he’d said? He’d wished he could wake up and celebrate it all over again, right at Bobby’s dusty old house.

Bobby gets up and grumbles to himself. Sam’s arm slides away with reluctance. 

“No, stay there,” Bobby says when Sam starts to get up too. The kitchen was only big enough for one, when it came to actually making anything.

“Where are you going?” 

“Catch up on some soap operas. I got this covered.”  


Sam doesn’t turn to soaps, though. He channel flips, nothing catching his interest for too long. Bobby finds the new habit of his exhausting, but he’s already told him so a few times so he holds his peace.

When the timer goes off, Bobby leaps up, ready. Sam does the same, and Bobby lets him follow.

“Wow,” Sam says as the “cake” steams, black around the edges. A pot holder that belonged to Bobby’s mother holds up a cake pan that used to belong to her too. Bobby’s got one of Karen’s oven mitts on, and the other is his own, cheaper and newer, and dirtier, because he can afford to let it be.  


“Shut up,” Bobby says, shooting him a glare.  


“No, it’s really great, Bobby,” Sam snarks, hands actually on his perfect hips. Bobby hits him with the dirtier oven mitt, hard. Sam just smiles easily, so easily, like he rarely did before.  


“Yeah, laugh it up. I made a big mess over there,” he nods to the counter, “and this fuckin’ thing didn’t come out right. You’re gonna do the dishes if you don’t shut up.”  


Sam just smirks. “Know what I’m thinkin’?” He eyes the cake with a strange disinterest, but also a strange glee.

“Forget the cake? Forget the birthday?”   


“Mm.” Sam shakes his head slightly. “Maybe we should just burn the whole thing down and start over.’”

“We”, like there’d been much “we” to go around, even with all the poker and the late nights. Sam was still far away, somehow. Bobby wondered if he’d ever get closer. “We.” “Oh, and you can make a cake, hotshot?”  


“I can, actually,” Sam is _still_ smug, blankly smug, like the fact he can bake doesn’t _really_  matter, when he should be acting like it does.  


Bobby hits him with the dirty mitt again, then takes it off, dropping it on the ground mic-drop style. “All yours,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t let him have the Karen mitt.

“Let’s do it together,” Sam says. “It’ll be nice!”  


“’Nice’?” Bobby mocks.  


“Yeah!” Sam bends down to get the mitt, and he’s really close and in just a v-neck and those cute jeans, his feet bare. His butt looks great, Bobby knows, even though he’s not at the right angle to see it. “Got more cake mix? If you don’t, I think I can still do this. It’s been a long time...but I was okay at this, if at not much else when it comes to food.”  


Sam moves methodically, which is expected of him now when he's doing almost anything, but there’s something soft, something “old Sam” about it too, about his focus and his diligence. Bobby’s been falling in love with him multiple times since he came back. He feels himself do it again.

“You finish up,” Bobby mutters. He drives to the store for some icing absently, and considers looking around for something to give Sam. He has no idea what Sam wants anymore, though. It seems like all he wants is to exist, which is simple enough, but doesn’t leave a lot for Bobby to do.

This cake is beautiful. Okay, that would be an exaggeration, brought on by surprise and by hunger, but it’s decent and it’s _cake_. 

Sam leans over to kiss the top of Bobby’s hat, curling an arm around him, and that’s another thing. He’s more physical. Which isn’t really bad. It’s kind of nice, actually. Sometimes Sam had been a little intimacy-reluctant for even Bobby’s solitary personality. “I got some frosting,” Bobby says. 

“Thanks,” Sam says, giving Bobby a little squeeze before letting go. “For that, for the cake. For going along with this. Lots of stuff is changing,” he says with a bit of regret, and Bobby instantly knows that Sam _knows_. Sam _knows_  he’s been weird.   


“But not all change is bad,” Sam adds. “Like celebrating more.”  


“Like more poker,” Bobby agrees.  


“Like more sex,” Sam laughs. Bobby quickly busies himself with getting out the can of frosting, avoiding Sam’s gaze, which is now fixed on him. Yeah, so, Bobby has his own issues with intimacy and with not being able to make up his mind sometimes. Oh well.  


“We just gonna eat this now?” Bobby asks. “No ‘real food’?”  


“No ‘real food’,” Sam easily agrees. Bobby eyes him to see if he really means it. “Cake is good!” Sam exclaims.  


Bobby rolls his eyes. Sam’s right, though. Cake is good. Makes sense he’d appreciate sweets more, the sudden hedonist. Of course, he always _had_ liked cake. Dean had been all about the pie, and Sam had been all about the cake.

The only other order of business was to do the dishes and throw out the sad, burnt cake. It rested in the stainless steel garbage can, charred at the edges, while only the crumbs remained in the familiar pan. Neither of them knew at the time that that reflected Sam’s situation all too well.

He’d be back, though, eventually, relatively whole, but with no memory of the birthday while that wall was still up. It killed Bobby to not be able to talk about their strange time together with anyone, though he knew it would kill Sam in a much more literal way if that wall cracked, crumbled like too-dry cake.

Even a shitty cake was still better than none. Even the strange Sam had been better than none. Life wasn’t much of a celebration without him, after all. Still, it was nice to have one that followed the recipe, all of it whole, presentable, palatable. 

There was nothing like it, really. There was nothing like a final product that was simple, and familiar, and good.


End file.
